Microsoft XBOX 360 Controller for PC

              Microsoft XBOX 360 Controller for PC

 With console gaming being very popular. The traditional gamepads are still the best option for all in one controller to play games at home. Microsoft XBOX 360 is one such console which has been in every gamers mind. Its controller is known for the best experience served by many users.

1. Brand Talk-

     This gamepad is manufactured by Microsoft, the well known American Software Company who have had a strong comeback in the video game console industry with the release of the XBOX 360 in 2006 ("that is after the flop display of the XBOX"). One of the main attributes of the XBOX 360 is its awesome controller. Having got good critical reception for the controller, Microsoft decided to make it compatible with the PC ("Or Windows to be specific").

2. Avatars-

    This gamepad is available majorly in two types, wired and wireless. It is also available in black or white colour for each type. The controller that I am reviewing is the black wireless model.

3. Out of the Box-

    The box looks like a typical input peripheral box that we have been seeing since the invention of the computer with hook holes at the top to keep it hanging in the store ("for you to spot it"). I can say it is well packed. You get the controller, wireless USB adaptor, 2 AA Duracell Battery, the user manual and the XBOX Configuration Utility Disk. The quality of the contents is top notch as usual by Microsoft.

4. Design and Build Quality-

   Design in gamepads is a major factor, because its comfort to your hands determines the true gaming experience. This controller has kept no stones unturned in this area. The design, placement of buttons is marvelous. The revolutionary right and left analog stick placement is a boon for every gamer out there. The directional pad is placed in between the analog sticks. There is an XBOX guide button is placed in the center of the gamepad. The start button is placed to its right and back button to its left. The ABXY button is placed as usual on the left side.

Top Side

 On the back of the gamepad lies the Left, right Bumper and Trigger buttons. There is a port in the middle for plugging the gamepad to the XBOX console or PC. At it's side there is button which allows many wireless controllers to be connected to the receiver.

Back Side

 At the bottom of the gamepad there is the battery housing, which can be taken out by pressing a button above it. 

At the back side of the controller there is a 2.5 mm headset port, which lets you connect an XBOX compatible headset.  Coming to the wireless receiver, it is well built and has a button in the middle which helps to connect to other controllers. The controller is well built overall. I somewhat don’t like the feel of the feedback of the ABXY which is a bit loose, its not that I am complaining but felt it would have been better if they were a bit tight.

5. Performance-

   a) Game Compatibility-

             The XBOX 360 controller for PC supports a vast number of game titles. It is mainly based on the XInput platform, a driver that Microsoft provides with the Supplied Disk that enables support to a vast game library. Some of the famous games supported by the controller can be seen by clicking the following link - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_with_XInput_support. You can also extend support to many game titles by installing various software available on the web. The XInput driver is only compatible with Windows XP Service Pack 1 and later versions. So users of windows with versions prior to Win XP SP1 will not be able to enjoy the library support. You can also connect this gamepad to your XBOX 360 Console.

b) Experience-

          Well I have had a good experience with this gamepad. You are drawn into the game with the comfort the gamepad provides. It nicely fits into your hand. The analog sticks are thoughtfully placed and are very easy to reach. The gamepad has a good weight feel. The wired version will be very light because of the absence of battery. But because of the presence of two batteries at the middle, there is a more sense of balance when you hold it. There is also force feedback available in the gamepad, but it's effect is not that convincing to let you feel the pain of the game. This gamepad is best if you have a huge TV and want to play with the comfort of your couch.

c) Wireless performance-

         This gamepad support the 2.4 Ghz WiFi Band. To get started you will have to connect the wireless receiver to your computer's USB port, the controller can be connected by pressing the guide button ("Voila! You are ready to play"). You can play upto a distance of 5 metres from the receiver. There is no lag in the input and is the same as that of your wired controller ("Thank God!").  

d) Extra Features-

      The gamepad can also be converted to a wireless mouse or a partial keyboard by installing some nifty utilities. I have installed a software called JoyToKey which is good. It lets you assign the buttons on the gamepad to various input functions like right click, left click, space, enter and many more.

e) Warranty-

  This gamepad comes with a one year warranty, which I suppose is enough for such type of a gadget.

6. Conclusion-

     The XBOX 360 Controller for Windows is a well thought decision by Microsoft to introduce it to general consumers. Priced around Rs.3000 in India (about $50) it is a very potential accessories that many gamers would want to have, given its beautiful styling and ergonomics.

Sony HD-E1 External Hard Drive Review

    SONY HD-E1 1 TB External Hard Drive Review

      With ever increasing quality of content which translates to higher file sizes, the need for higher capacity medium has become a necessity. With the price of external hard drives plummeting, the acceptance of this device is on a positive note. Many reputed brands want to cash in on this market segment, which has resulted in the availability of many external drives in the market. Sony HD-E1 is one such hard drive which is a great contender in its market. Let's check out the drive from Sony.

1. Brand Talk-

    This external hard drive is manufactured by SONY, the Japanese Electronics Giant who are known for their quality in products. Sony is not a major player in computer hard drive market, but have made a name for delivering reliable products. They have only one major type of external drives and they are named Sony HD-Ex. Where 'x' normally denotes the size of the hard drive. Their latest hard drive line up ("I mean it was there since 2010, I think") have the same looks.

2. Avatars in the Market-

   This hard drive is available in many colours for a particular size. For the 1 TB version it is available in black, silver, pink, gold and all these colours are metallic.

3. Out of the box-

     The box looks pretty basic. 

The Box

 

Unboxing it you find the external hdd, data cable, warranty card and the user manual. The hdd and the cable are of very good quality for sure.

4. Design and Build Quality-

    Design in general and looks in particular is very important for an external hard drive. This is because you are always carrying it, and certainly want your friends… ("or strangers") to look at it and complement you. This hard drive does just that. Describing its looks, it is woooov!!!.

The beautiful drive

 It has spectacular looks ("Something like a delicious aluminium biscuit"). It is arguably the best looking external hard drive that you will find in the market. The great looks, aluminium casing and the metallic colours certainly complement each other. It has a dimension of 80 x 16 x 126 mm and weighs 220 g.  The hard drive is kept simple, with Sony's branding on the top and nothing more fancy stuff in it. It has a proprietary port at the back which connects to a USB connector at the other end through a cable. 

There is a light hidden inside the back panel for indication when the hard drive is plugged to the pc. 

Sony's Proprietery Port

At the below there are the foundation rubber pads at four corners and the mandatory logos to portray its compliance to various standards available out there. 

The Bottom Side

Build of the device is excellent; the aluminium casing gives a robust feel. The brush aluminium finish makes it scratch resistant upto an acceptable degree. The data cable provided could have been a bit long ("it is just 2 ft guys") as I found it was just adequate if you are using it with a laptop, but for users with a PC it might seem difficult to manage to keep the hard drive on the table as normally the CPU Unit is kept below the table. Overall it is a thumbs up for Sony's spectacular design and robust build quality. 

5. Features-

 a) In built software-

 The Hard Drive comes with pre-loaded software which enhances the user experience and extends functionality. The software pre-loaded are Data Transfer Accelerator, Backup Manager, Password Protection Manager and FAT32 Formatter.

i) Data Transfer Accelerator speeds reduces the time taken to copy a large file. Sony claims that through USB 3.0 it can download a 500MB file in 9 sec with the software and 19 sec without it, through USB 2.0 it can download a 500 MB file in 16 sec with the software and 30 sec without.

ii) Backup Manager can backup the files from your pc to your external HDD.

iii) Password Protection manager is a utility to encrypt a part of your hard drive space with a password. You can choose the amount of space to be protected and that space will only show once you unlock it using the password you have set. But misplacing or forgetting the password will make the encrypted space unusable forever ("so choose an easy password").

iv) The FAT32 Formatter formats the hdd to FAT32 from NTFS. You can also reformat to NTFS when needed. You can format it to FAT32 to use it with the Playstation 3 console.

b) Performance-

     Now coming to the real life performance, the hard drive does fare well in terms of performance. Sometimes it is a bit sluggish when used in USB 2.0, but otherwise it is a descent performing hard drive. It has 256bit AES Data Encryption and also does not need any external power.The hard drive does not get heated with prolong use, so you don’t have to worry of that part.

However I liked the built in software like Password Protection Manager and Data Transfer Accelerator as they to some extent deliver as claimed.

c) Warranty-

   This hard drive comes with 3 years domestic warranty which might vary for other countries. This is a good gesture by Sony by providing an adequate warranty period.

6. Conclusion-

    With external hdd's becoming a necessity, there is a huge competition in the market. Since the main parameter of hard drives is it's usable space, there has to be something extra to attract customers and Sony has done just that. It is priced around Rs.4700/- to Rs.5200/- (Around $80), I think this will certainly attract customers given it's superb looks and performance. 

Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 Review

                                        

                      SAMSUNG GALAXY TAB 2 P3110 REVIEW

   Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 3110 is the successor to the successful Samsung Galaxy Tab P1000. The Galaxy Tab 2 is Samsung's flagship budget 7'' tablet which has been released to carry on the success of it's predecessor. So can it really deliver? Let's See.

1. Brand Talk-

     This tablet is manufactured by Samsung, the Korean electronics giant who hold the largest mobile market share in the world. Samsung has been delivering quality devices with buyer friendly price tags in the past three years along with promising after sales support.

2. Gadget Avatars in the Market-
      This tablet is available majorly in two types one is with WiFi only and the other is with WiFi and 3G. It is also available in different internal memory sizes and colours for the above two types. For the Internal Memory there is 8gb, 16gb model available and for the colours there is white and black. The type which i am reviewing is the 16 GB Wifi Only White model.  

3.  Out of the box

    The box as usual has the typical Samsung'ish look. Well designed box which gives you a clear idea on what you can expect inside.

 Once you unbox, you find the tablet seated on a white cardboard which separates it from its accessories, lifting the tablet you find Samsung's 30-pin proprietary connector  to USB charger cum data cable ("it is not micro USB guys"), charger with USB port, standard headphones, three pairs of eartips of different sizes, quick start guide and the warranty card.

 All the accessories included are of very good quality. 

 

                                      

                                   
                                     


Overall Samsung has provided all the necessary contents inorder to get a complete multimedia experience.

4. Design and Build quality

   The tablet has a sporty look to it ("that’s what I felt"). I feel it appeals to those who want to make a fashion statement and also those conservative people out there ("weird, but true, haha"). The tablet has a rectangular shape with curvy edges framed by a brush metallic plastic. The tablet has dimensions of 193.7 x 122.4 x 10.5 mm and weighs 345 g. In the front there is the 7" screen covered by glass ("I found it difficult to differentiate whether it was glass or plastic"). Above the screen at the right there is a front facing camera and to its left there is an ambient light sensor. A Samsung logo is engraved below the screen between the bezel and the glass. 

At the right hand side there is the power button at the top and volume rocker below it, the power button feels fragile and has a loose feel to it however there were no problems with the volume rocker. 

At the left hand side there is a micro SD card slot.

 On the top there is the 3.5 mm headphones jack and a mic pinhole besides it to the right.

 At the bottom there is Samsung's 30-pin proprietary port for connecting the charger cum data cable. At it's both sides there is a speaker each.

 The back is fully plastic with a ceramic feel to it with Samsung's logo printed in the middle, to the top left lies the rear facing camera. However, the back cover cannot be removed to replace the battery.

 Overall I found the design pleasant for usage with no strange or wild looks in it.

5. Features-

      So let's see what this tablet packs in itself for Samsung to call it a budget feature packed tablet.

a) Screen-

     This tablet has a 7" PLS type LED Backlit LCD Display with a resolution of 1024 x 600 pixels with a pixel density of 170ppi and capable of showing 16 million colours ("Oh,yeah!"). 

To be frank the screen is, I can say adequate or average for budget users. It has good colour reproduction, enough sharpness but has very bad viewing angles.  Tilt the tablet a little bit from your eyes you see the colours washed out ("But why the hell would you tilt the screen").It is a multitouch display which can register upto 10 touches simultaneously. As told before, it is an adequate quality screen for budget friendly consumers.

b) Performance-

     This tablet has some interesting firepower which is a good decision by Samsung. At its core, it houses a Dual Core 1 Ghz Cortex-A9 processor in a TI OMAP 4430 chipset. For the graphics, it has a PowerVR SGX540.  It has 1 gb of RAM and 16gb of Internal Memory. It also has a micro SD expansion card slot which can support upto 32 gb capacity card. Coming to its performance in benchmarks we saw average performance from this tablet. In Benchmark Pi it scored 504 (lower the better). In NenaMark 2 (which is a gaming benchmark) it scored a meagre 21.2 fps. It scored 2226 points in SunSpider (lower the better) and a 94621 in BrowserMark. All said this tablet has specs sufficient for day to day activities and for moderate graphics games.

c) Connectivity, GPS and Sensors-

    This tablet has good connectivity options in its case. It has WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n with 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz support. WiFi Direct and DLNA support is available. It has Bluetooth 3.0 with support to A2DP profile. As for the sensors it has accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and an ambient light sensor. Coming to the GPS, it has A-GPS along with GLONASS which provides pretty accurate positioning data. There is a 30 pin proprietary port, which can be used for charging through the supplied power adapter (but not through the pc) ("Shame on you, Samsung"). You can however expand the port's functionality by plugging in the Samsung Adapter ("you have to buy it separately for about $25") which connects to the proprietary port and has a SD reader and usb port in the other end. You can connect USB flash drives, mice and keyboards to the USB port. It has a 3.5 mm audio jack for your headphones and audio out. Overall it has good connectivity options.

d) Software-

    This tablet comes with Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean out of the box.
There is no latest over the air updates released by Samsung for this tablet ("booh!"). It comes with Samsung's TouchWiz UX UI which I must say is very good.

 This tablet is blessed with good apps, it has Polaris Office which has a document viewer/editor. It supports internal and web storage. You can easily view and edit word documents, spreadsheets, Powerpoint presentations. It also has a PDF viewer in it ("Great").The calendar app call S Planner is great, I found it's design and uses very impressing. You can add new event, set alarm, reminders. It has daily, monthly and yearly views. There are good calculator and alarm app also. There is also a World Clock app which looks beautiful with its animated views when a certain location in the globe is selected. There are flags, day and night animations as well. Custom apps have also been bundled along which includes My files, S-Memo, Photo Editor, Video Editor, Paper Artist which are you know add light to the party (" They are great").  For Web browsing it has the default android web browser which has support for flash contents. Google Maps takes care of the map department with concise representation of places in the map. I can say software us a strong point of this tablet and will definitely woo buyers. It has all necessary apps to provide a productive experience from your tablet.

e) Battery-

      This tablet has a 4000mah battery built into it.  The battery is non user replaceable.  The battery life is poor, you hardly get a day's charge with heavy usage like web browsing and playing games. But it should suffice budget users.

f) Audio, Video and Camera-

      This tablet has a custom TouchWiz music player, which is more functional than the stock Android app, but lacks the cover-flow-like browsing. You can sort your tracks by album, artist, genre, folders, composer or year. It also has playlist options. There is a dedicated video player app for this tablet. It has thumbnails, list and folder view modes, which is great. It supports DivX/XviD/MKV files ("Finally"). High-res videos are handled without any hassles even the 1080p ones. The player can also play videos which other third party apps cannot and it can also play videos smoothly than other apps out there ("Well done Samsung"). To sum it up the video player has support for a wide varieties of formats. Coming to the camera, this tab has a 3.15 MP rear facing camera which supports 720p HD video recording. It also supports geo-tagging and smile detection. There is a dedicated camera app which has a lot of useful features like panorama, share shot, buddy photo share and also smile shot for the shooting mode. There is also a 2, 5 and 10 sec timer for family portraits. It also has many special effects like black and white, sepia, and negative. It also has exposure compensation of -2 to +2. There are also different white balance modes. You can also set gridlines for easy shooting. You can use both internal and memory card as preferred storage. The camera takes surprisingly good photos with great dynamic range and low noise in them. The camera also shows similar performance in the video recording, The videos have good detail, low noise and somewhat accurate colours. Coming to the front facing camera, it is just enough for low quality video call and definitely not great for taking photos. Overall this tablet excels in this section with good hardware-software integration.

6. Conclusion-

       Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 was aimed at targeting the budget audience. Have they succeeded? Yes, they certainly have. Samsung have done a great job packing in a decent hardware and complementing it with great software. With good multimedia and productivity features, it is also going to appeal gadget freaks who are on a low budget. Overall it is a serious player in the budget category.

ASUS Google Nexus 7 Review

ASUS Google Nexus 7 (2012 16GB Wifi Version) Review

  

     Since the discovery of tablet, the market has been flooding with tablets, phablets and all types of xxxblets. Due to the development of smaller micron processors, portability is not a problem nowadays. In the midst of the competition ASUS Google Nexus 7 is an upcoming tablet screaming to grab everyone's attention. It retails for around $179 and $199 for 16gb and 32gb wifi only versions respectively and $230 for 16gb wifi + 3g version. So let's get in to the review arena.

1. Brand Talk:

  

          This tablet is manufactured by ASUSTek, a Taiwanese Electronics giant who are known for the manufacture of laptops, graphics card, cd/dvd/bluray drives, mobiles and of course tablets. They are known for their high quality products all over the world. The Nexus 7 is also co-developed by Google, the US based internet search giant. The Nexus is Google's concept by virtue of which they have equal involvement with the manufacturer in the development and production of the tablet.  These tablets are for those who need a stock android experience (" i.e android without any OEM's modification"). They will also be the first devices to get Google's latest Android updates.

2.   Out of the box

             

         The box looks premium at first sight ("credit goes to ASUS as always"). 

The box

                                     

The box with cover opened

Jewel Hidden inside

The very first grab of the tablet in your hands makes you feel it is worth the money and your excited to open it up gently without damaging the box ("hey that’s what I felt"). Once you open the box, you find your beautiful nexus tablet seated a gem. Inside is a charger with USB port, micro USB data/charger cable, instructions manual and the warranty card. 

Fully unboxed, From top left- manual, warranty card, tablet, USB cable, charger

                                   

Asus have kept it simple without adding any extra goodies (" I mean no headphones, what the!"). Overall ASUS has done a good job; I would certainly have liked the presence of headphones in the box, but considering the low price tag ASUS couldn’t do the sacrifice.

3.  Design and Build Quality

            

               The Tablet looks awesome. When you look at it, you wonder whether it's a $250 tablet. It is an all clad black tablet and there are no other colour options. The front is gorgeous, the corning glass gives it a designer look (" frankly I could not keep my eyes away from it").

Front View of Tablet

 It has a dimension of 198.5 x 120 x 10.5 mm and weighs 340 g.  There is one and the only one 1.2 mp camera just above the display, adjacent lies the ambient light sensor.

The front facing camera and the light sensor

 The glass is framed by a brushed aluminium plastic which is great. The back also looks fantastic, with the nexus and ASUS logo. It has a premium rubberized cover which feels professional. 

Back View of Tablet

The speaker is placed at the bottom just below the ASUS logo.

The Speaker

 Unfortunately there is no user replaceable battery in it ("wait a minute! Is it required for a tablet? Think about it"). Also there is unfortunately no rear camera for reasons best known only to Google and ASUS (" are you listening ASUS and Google"). The top side contains only a mic pinhole. 

Top Side View of Tablet

The bottom contains the 3.5mm headphone jack and the micro usb port which can be used for charging, computer connections (MTP and PTP) and has USB host enabled for connecting mice and keyboards. Unfortunately you cannot connect mass storage devices, which would require you to root the android software to enable. 

Back View of Tablet

 On the left we find a second mic pinhole and pogo pins for dock connection.

The left view of Tablet

On the right we have the power button and the volume up down button.

Right View of Tablet

 To sum it up, the design is beautiful and the build quality is robust, I did not find any creaks or squeaks.

4. Features

  

              ENtering the middle of the arena, this is a tablet blessed with features. Let's see what it packs in each department.

a) Screen-

               The screen is one of the main selling points of this tablet. When I first saw the display, I thought ASUS must have mistakenly put such an expensive type of display in my tablet. The decision of tablet buyers can be easily biased looking at this screen. It's a 7 inch 1280x800 WXGA resolution IPS Type LED Backlit LCD Screen with a pixel density of 216 ppi capable of displaying 16 million colours ("wooh"). It has a contrast ratio of 950, which is a good figure ("apple ipads have a ratio of 920").

The beautiful screen

 It is a multitouch display which can register upto 10 touches simultaneously. The physical aspects of the screen is that it is glossy, scratch proof and is a Corning Gorilla glass. The screen has high sharpness, good colour reproduction and the colours are very vibrant. The viewing angles are great due to the IPS Display, there is negligible colour fading at different angles. The visibility under sunlight is poor, because the screen has very low brightness and reflective glossy screen. It is viewable under normal sunlight, but under heavy sunlight you can hardly see anything. Overall the screen is great, well done ASUS.

b) Performance-

                  Nexus 7 is gifted with a Quad Core 1.3 Ghz Cortex-A9 CPU in Nvidia Tegra 3 Chipset. The graphics is powered by the ULP GeForce Chip. It has 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of internal storage. There is no expandable microSD slot however. The specifications look good on paper but does it do justice to its performance? The answer is YES! The tablet is super speed, super snappy. The touch response is Wow!. Google has done a good job in optimizing the software to be enjoyed by the beasty hardware. The performance also shows in standard benchmarks. In Linpack it scored 121.4, In NenaMark 2 which is a gaming benchmark it scored a whopping 58 fps, IN Benchmark Pi it scored 421 (lower is better). Coming to the browser tests, in Sun Spider it scored 1698 (lower is better) and in Browser Mark it scored 13170. For those who don’t know what the above numbers mean, it means the tablet is a great performer.

c) Connectivity, GPS and Sensors-

             This tablet has all the essential connectivity options which you require for the present situation. It has Bluetooth 3.0, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, NFC ("wow!). NFC is available along with Android Beam, this means you can transfer images from two NFC enabled device just by tapping them. Bluetooth speakers can also be paired by tapping ("hmm."). The tablet is equipped with A-GPS for positioning which is very accurate. There is a microUSB port for charging and file transfer, but no mass storage option. There is 3.5 mm jack for audio output. In the sensor department it has accelerometer, gyroscope, ambient light sensor and a compass. Overall it has all the important connectivity options needed for a descent tablet.     

d) Software-

         

            This tablet comes with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean out of the box and will soon be getting the Android 4.4 KitKat update in the coming days. Presently the latest Android installable is the Android 4.3 version of Jelly Bean. 

About tab in settings reading Android 4.3 installed

In the software front you get a stock android experience without any unnecessary apps installed by OEM's . All the standard apps from Google like Google+, Keep, Hangout, Currents, Google Maps come pre-installed. It has Google Chrome as its default browser, which according to me is great.

The Apps Menu

The Home Screen

The Lock Screen

e) Battery-

        The tablet has a 4325mAH Li-ion non-removable battery. The battery life is commendable. Heavy tasks like playing games, browsing internet will give you around 2 days of battery life, which when compared with other tablets around is a great achievement.

f) Audio, Video Playback and Camera-

      For audio there is a Play Music App, which I found was ok! Nothing great about it. It has all the standard features of a music player. It can play MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA formats. The speakers are very good, the sound quality is excellent but it would better if it was a little bit loud. The audio quality of the headphones is also good with good frequency response. The video playback is through the …….? ("Oh! there is no dedicated video player app"). You can play your videos from the gallery. It supports MP4/H.264 formats. There is no dedicated camera app to record video or click photos from the front facing camera. It is only meant for video calling through the Google Messenger. The quality of the 1.2 MP Camera is good, I can say.

5. Conclusion-

               Nexus 7 has changed and will change the way how consumers will look at Android tablets in the coming days. This is because it has set a benchmark sending a strong message that an Android tablet can also have  good touch response and can be super snappy, even though it doesn’t match the touch experience as that of an Apple Ipad we can say it is not far away from the Ipad's shore. Price being its main selling point this tablet is selling like hotcakes. Google have done a splendid job along with ASUS by subsidizing the price of this tablet which has the specs of tablets costing $100 more than this one. For this build, screen quality, processor and battery it is very hard to find any tablet at this price range. I brought this tablet for Rs.10000 from an online store in India which is around $160. I am clearly convinced that this is worth the money and would certainly recommend this tablet.

Please leave your comments below, I would really appreciate it!

SLIK F630 Tripod Review

       SLIK F630 Tripod Review

      In a huge jungle of tripods out there Slik F630 is one such tripod that comes out of the store with you for $30 - $40. This is the superior model to the popular Slik F153. The vital stats of this tripod states-  

a) Tripod Weight - 1.32kg

b) Folded Length - 56 cm

c) Maximum Operating Height- 147 cm

d) Max Center Column Height- 32.5 cm

e) Max Loading Capacity- 1.5 kg

1. Brand Talk:

     This tripod is made by SLIK, a Japanese company. They are a camera tripod only manufacturing company ("which means they only care about tripods"). They are a well established brand from 50 years and have won many accolades for their innovations in the tripod industry.

Yup! This is their logo

2.   Out of the box:

     The box looks boring ("what can you expect from a tripod box anyway"). Leaving aside the looks, it packs a punch inside it. A tripod, tripod bag and its manual comes out the box. Ya that’s it, enough of the box talk!

The Box

Stripped Naked from left- carry bag, tripod with user manual and box

                         
     

The Carry Bag

                                                    
  3. Features:

     

          The tripod looks beautiful, with an all black attire. It definitely catches eye's. 

The Tripod folded

The designed load capacity is about 1.5 kg, which is enough for a Cropped Sensor DSLR or point and shoot cameras, camcorders ("obviously!"). The tripod increases your weight by 1.32 kg ("that is if you hold it and check your weight on a weighing scale"). It is a 3 way pan head type tripod, which means you can do panning, tilting in up, down and side direction ("that's impressive!"). The mounting of the camera is with the quick release shoe, to which the camera has to be mounted and should be locked on the tripod with the help of the quick release shoe lock lever. Panning is done with the help of the Pan handle. 

Panning with the help of the pan handle

Panning can be locked with the help of the panning lock knob. Tilting in the up, down direction is controlled by the pan handle. The lock for it is provided in the pan handle itself. Tilting sideways is done by releasing the vertical tilt lock through the vertical tilt knob and by turning the head in the required direction. The centre column can be extended with the help of the elevation crank handle which drives the rack. There is a radial lock to lock the extension ("nice"). There is a single bubble spirit level to show the level of the tripod. The radial extension of the legs is done by the radial braces connected to the center column along with the lock. The three legs of the tripod is extended by releasing the leg lock levers ("specifically there are 2 of them at each legs") . Feature wise this tripod has the basic minimum for amateurs at this price.

4. Design & Build Quality:

         I must say the build of the tripod is fantastic. It feels premium when operating it, that’s it! This tripod is made in China. The three legs feel very rigid, there are no loose links of any sort.  The leg lock levers, which are good; very snappy I must say ("not too hard to open or not to loose;which is you know good "). At the bottom there are rubber tips to face the ground.  The leg braces are strong along with the center column lock. The neck is made of good quality poly-carbonate plastic. There is a beautiful spirit level attached to the neck. Now coming to the pan type tripod head, which I must say is also of good quality poly-carbonate plastic. This is one piece of a nice head ! The pan handle and pan lock knob are very robust and have a great feel. The movement bearings also give you a feel that they are good.  The quick release shoe,  shoe lock lever, vertical tilt lock knob , center column locking collar, elevation crank handle are all from good poly-carbonate plastic build. The center column extension is made of aluminium, but the rack and pinion gear arrangement is of poly-carbonate plastic (" you don’t want them getting rusted, do ya").  Although I felt the center column elevation crank handle could have been designed better, for quick control. Overall for this price range I can say this type of build quality is one of the best you can get. There is a carry sleeve given along with the tripod, which you know is ok at best.

5. Operation:

  
         You really want to operate it when you see it. The radius of the leg can be easily increased or decreased because of the good leg brace arrangement.  The locking of the braces is also easy using the ring locking collar. The extension of the legs is very smooth through the leg lock lever. The center column extension is smooth, but the retraction has some jerks to it, which you know is ok! ("thank god").  The panning movement is also smooth. The locks are a bit tight, but you know they have to be that way (" you don’t want your dslr controlling your tripod, do you"). The tilting up, down motion is fantastic at best. The sideways tilting motion needs a bit power to be put to the head, but that’s the way it should be, being the most critical part of the tripod. The quick release shoe can be easily detached and mounted. But I felt attaching my DSLR to the shoe was a bit difficult, but you know its not a major problem ("remember practice makes a man perfect"). All locks in the tripod were strong and makes you feel more confident of what you are doing (" which is the only thing we want right "). Overall the operation is very easy, no problems as such.

6. Conclusion:

  
      There are a lot of tripods in the market out there with interesting specs, but you can know which one is the best by only trying them out, which I have done and am writing my experience. I brought this tripod for around Rs.1750 in India roughly around $30 from an online store, it retails for around Rs.2500 ($42) here.  But for this price I think this is one of the best you can get. The superb build quality, looks, ease of operation, features more than justifies its price. So Slik F630, I would certainly recommend.

Please leave comments below, it will help me to improve in the future.